The benches in Hawas park in the battered city of Aleppo are now mere metal skeletons, the wood stripped off by residents to burn so they can keep warm in the northern Syrian winter.

After months of battles devastated much of the city, the country's former commercial hub, the people of Aleppo are trying to lead as normal a life as possible, despite the deadly conflict that has raged for more than 21 months.

Egyptian security forces have seized U.S.-made anti-tank and surface-to-air missiles destined for Gaza, where militants have said they would acquire more weapons to use against Israel, security officials said on Friday.

The officials said six missiles were found hidden in the Sinai, which borders both the Gaza Strip and Israel, after security forces were tipped off to the hiding place.

A Yemeni man has been arrested on charges of spying for Israel and will be tried this week, the defense ministry said on Friday.

"Abraham al-Dharrahi, a 24-year-old Yemeni IT worker, will be tried in the next two days in Yemen's criminal court on charges of espionage for Israel's Mossad intelligence agency," the ministry quoted a judicial source as saying.

Syria has slammed as "biased" a United Nations report that called the conflict in the country overtly sectarian, state media said on Friday.

The foreign ministry accused the U.N. of a "lack of professionalism" in producing its report, and said that any sectarian dimensions to the conflict were because of foreign support for "armed groups," state news agency SANA said.

A slender majority of Israelis support the creation of a separate Palestinian state, but did not have high hopes for a peace deal, a survey said on Friday.

The survey by daily Israel Hayom asked more than 800 Israelis "do you support or oppose the idea of two states for two peoples, i.e. the creation of a Palestinian state independent from Israel?"

Syrian regime warplanes and troops on Friday blasted away at rebels close to Damascus, the day after a car bomb in a mainly Alawite northern district of the capital killed at least 11 people, a watchdog said.

Fighter-bombers were hitting Duma, northeast of Damascus, and army artillery was shelling the southwestern Daraya neighborhood which the rebels have led against regime assaults for weeks, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The death toll from a truck bomb targeting pilgrims after the conclusion of annual mourning rituals for a revered figure in Shiite Islam has risen to 23, an official said on Friday.

A further 49 people were wounded in the Thursday evening attack in the town of Musayyib, which lies about half-way along the main route linking Baghdad and the shrine city of Karbala where millions of worshippers have attended Arbaeen commemoration ceremonies in recent days.

Hundreds of thousands of supporters of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah party on Friday held their first mass rally in Gaza since Hamas seized control of the territory in 2007, according to a Fatah spokesman.

Hamas, in a sign of reconciliation with Fatah, permitted the rally to go ahead as the climax of a week of Gaza festivities celebrating the 48th anniversary of Fatah taking up arms against Israel.

A car bomb in a north Damascus neighborhood mainly inhabited by members of President Bashar Assad's Alawite minority killed at least 11 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Friday.

Two children were among the dead in the attack which occurred late Thursday in the Massaken Barzeh district, the Britain-based watchdog said.

Australians who take part in the fighting in Syria face up to 20 years in jail, a spokesman for Foreign Minister Bob Carr said Friday after a Melbourne man was reportedly killed in the conflict.

The spokesman said the government was aware of reports that more than 100 Australians had engaged in the conflict since 2011 but he had "no evidence" of any citizens currently involved.